Famous Residents in Bordeaux — 3 of Our Favourites

Painting of Michel de Montaigne Bordeaux

1. Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)

Michel de Montaigne wrote some of the first ever 'essays' - works written from the author's personal perspective - which are today some of the most frank and easy-to-follow from this period.

He is thought to have influenced many authors: Descartes, Emerson, Rousseau and possibly even Shakespeare. He is famously the author of the quote "the only thing certain is nothing is certain". Despite these achievements, he was more widely known during his lifetime for his role in keeping the region in favour with the Kings of France and acting as a balancing power between the Protestants and the Roman Catholics.

Born on the family estate in a town now named Saint-Michel-de-Montaigne, near to Castillon-la-Bataille, he was the Mayor of Bordeaux for four years during the mid-16th century.

2. Charles Louis de Montesquieu (1689-1755)

Location: La Brede

Born at the Château de la Brède, south of Bordeaux, Montesquieu was a French philosopher, social commentator and political thinker of some renown. He wrote works commenting on some of the strange habits of common society and most significantly wrote about the importance of political liberty.

Montesquieu recommended that there should be a separation of powers in governments i.e. that the executive, legislative, and judicial functions should be governed by different entities, something which is taken as given today. He also argued for the legal concepts of the right to innocence until proven guilty, the right to a fair trial and for proportionality of punishment. These important works, named The Spirit of the Laws, were prohibited by the Catholic Church, though celebrated internationally. His anthropological works, which in particular discuss the influence of the environment on society, are considered to have been at the forefront of this discipline.

3. Francois Mauriac (1885-1970)

The Bordeaux-born author, François Mauriac, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1952 "for the deep spiritual insight and the artistic intensity with which he has in his novels penetrated the drama of human life".

He studied literature at the university of Bordeaux before moving to Paris to study at the Ecole des Chartes. Known for having several rather public and bitter disputes with fellow authors over matters of religion and politics, he was, amongst other things, a journalist at Le Figaro and L'express newspapers.

His masterpieces included Le Désert de l'Amour (The Desert of Love, 1925), Thérèse Desqueyroux (1927), and its sequel La Fin de la Nuit (The End of the Night, 1935), La Pharisienne (A Woman of the Pharisees, 1941) and Le Noeud de vipères (The Knot of Vipers, 1932).

He was the father of writer Claude Mauriac and grandfather of Anne Wiazemsky, a French actress and author who worked with and married French director Jean-Luc Godard.